Vac’s heavy gaze was on the guards until their huddle around Jaysynn broke up and they made their way to the door.  Coonhil closed it behind them, and remained standing at the front edge of the room.

“Have a seat,” Vac told Jaysynn, stretching his hand toward a chair off to the side of the desk.

Jaysynn looked into the man’s face trying to read something in those dark eyes, that unshaven jaw, the gray lines in his hair.

“You were taken out of bed to go on a ten mile hike,” Vac said.  “Take a seat.”

Jaysynn sat.

The governor patted his pockets until he found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.  He lit one and took a draw with his eyes closed.  Relaxation visibly spread through his face and his body.

“I’d offer you one,” he said, “but you don’t smoke, and it’s a lousy time to get hooked.”  Another puff.  “You never got along with Shar.  Your favorite book is Fields of Sand.  You were never any good at math.”  Vac walked over toward his desk and he went on, “You touch the tip of your nose whenever you’re about to sneeze.  When you walk, you always start with your right foot.  If given the opportunity to run, you will escape, because you’re an accomplished tracer.”

“What are these—assassin’s notes?” Jaysynn asked.

Vac opened his top desk drawer and produced a combat knife in a fine leather sheath.  “When you arrived in my brother’s camp…” he held up the knife, “this and a change of clothes is all you had in your pack.  It’s a Thyrian military knife, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” said Jaysynn.

“But you were never in the Thyrian military, were you?”

Jaysynn took a deep breath.  He could see where these questions were leading, but had no way to change their course.  “No,” he said.

“Then where did you get this knife?”

“I had access to as many of those as I wanted,” Jaysynn said.  “And I needed a knife.”

Vac put the knife back in the drawer.  He tapped his cigarette on the lip of the ash tray and walked back over to where Jaysynn sat.  “Don’t lie to me about the things I already know,” Vac said.

“It was a gift,” Jaysynn said.

“From Xander Dracon.”

“Who was a close friend of the family,” Jaysynn added.

“And who personally trained you in the Thyrian art of tracing.”  Vac was calm as he spoke.  There was no anger, no cruelty in his voice, not even a note of pride at having pinned Jaysynn with the truth.  He went on, “And that same Xander Dracon is now the head of state in Thyrion.  He kept you alive with the promise of making you emperor.  That was his plan, and yours, too:  to kill the whole world and rise to the top of the rubble.  But when it succeeded, he pushed you out.  You ran for life.  What I want to know is, why did he do it?”

“It sounds like your spies don’t have all their facts straight,” Jaysynn said.  He could feel Vac setting traps for him, and knew he would get caught again if he weren’t careful.  He couldn’t be sure of what to say or do, but his instincts were clear on one thing:  he should lie.  “Dracon was never a part of any plan—at least not that he shared with me.”

“Then who?  Your father?”

“No,” said Jaysynn.

“Then do you deny the possibility that established leaders in Thyrion had anything to do with the Cataclysm?”

Jaysynn thought for a second, careful to find the answer that would tell the governor nothing.  “I think I would know something about it if that were the case,” he said.

Vac nodded to himself in thought.  “I don’t know what I expected from a house of liars,” he said.  Jaysynn gave no reply.  “The only reason Falcon Point has fared as well as it has is because we never trusted your family or your empire.  And now here I am trying to get truth out of you.”

He wanted to give a speech, but he wanted to do it slowly.  He straightened his back a little and peered about the room, at the pictures hanging on the wall, the past leaders of Falcon Point.

“Do you know why so many of my guards have swords?” he asked.

Jaysynn said nothing, but stared up at him from his seat.

With a glance, Vac could see the anger in the young man’s eyes, and he knew that Jaysynn was waiting for another trap, another lie, another carefully calculated piece of manipulation.

But Governor Vac went on, each man trying to outmaneuver the other’s mind:

“It’s because we saw the theories coming out of Jalseion.  Instability in magic.  Mutability of the substance.  We saw the new experiments.  The explosion of isolated magic samples.  This wasn’t possible ten years ago.  Now it was happening by mistake as the great scientists of the day pioneered new ways of manipulating the lifeblood of the world.

“So my men and I got together and said, ‘what if people develop a way of building a bomb out of magic?’  And we spread a little propaganda around the city, encouraging responsible citizens to dig bomb shelters and stock them with food.  Those that did are still eating today.  And we said, ‘what if people develop a way of triggering these explosions—of exploding batteries remotely?  They could shut off our lights and shut down our factories and render our guns useless.’  So we taught our people that the way to cherish the heritage of Falcon Point—the heritage of the city of Freedom—was to buy swords to hang on their walls as decorations.  So we’ve got good weapons all over the city.  And now the best methods of swordsmithing are lost, gone with the wells.  That puts us in a pretty good place if this Cataclysm brings in a war—or an age of wars.”

“I’m sure you’re delighted that you can benefit from this,” Jaysynn said.

“When the rules change, your highness, we adapt.”

“So you knew this was going to happen.”

Vac grabbed Jaysynn by the shirt and lifted him to his feet.  He raised his voice for the first time:  “If I knew this was going to happen I’d have followed your army all the way back to the Heart of Thyrion.  I’d have killed your whole family to stop it.  I’d have put your father’s head on a platter.”  He pushed Jaysynn back down into the chair.  “Did you know this was going to happen?  That’s what I want to know.”

Jaysynn did not answer.  He turned his face away and pulled his eyes tightly closed.  His lips quivered.

Vac’s palm struck him on the cheek and the sound of the slap echoed on the castle walls.  “You damn crybaby,” he said.  “Answer the question.”

Jaysynn gave no reply, and Vac struck him again, and more silence followed.

Coonhil took a few steps toward the center of the room and gave a polite reminder to the governor:  “His family is dead, sir.”

Vac backed away from the chair and brushed his upper legs off with his hands, as if he’d gotten them dirty.  Like his brother, he had a tone for business and a tone for sincerity.  “Right.  Of course,” he said, beginning to grow calm. “It’s easy to hate family.  Everybody does.  You did.  But it’s hard to stop loving them.  It hurts to go through what you’ve been through.  I’m sorry kid.  Look, I don’t like you, but I’m trying hard not to be a jackass.  I want to see justice, but your well is just as ruined as ours is.  And I guess I want revenge, but every looter and vandal on every street in every city in the whole world is already dishing that out.  The world is being wiped clean right now.  And who knows—if people like you and me can keep our heads—I mean if we can keep from getting killed—then maybe we’ll live long enough to see, you know, a good life.  So just tell me this much:  is Thyrion planning to attack us?”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Jaysynn said.

Vac turned ferocious again in an instant.  He struck Jaysynn once more and shouted, “Dammit.  Don’t you realize I’ve got spies that can tell me something as obvious as that?  Alright, get the guards back in here.”

When Coonhil opened the door the guards quickly filled the room and stood around Jaysynn’s chair and seized him.  They lifted him to his feet, but Vac held up a hand to stop them.  He looked Jaysynn in the eye and said, “I realize your life has probably been turned upside-down more than anybody else’s by this little disaster, so I understand that you don’t want to tell anything to the head of Falcon Point.  But listen—what I want is simple:  I want to protect my neighbors and my friends.  I want to protect the kids on my street.  To me, those are the people that need protected, not dead men like your father or tyrants like Dracon.  And the more I know about the invaders—the people who attack my city unprovoked—the better I’ll be able to do that.  So I suggest you take our little Cataclysm as an opportunity to reflect on your loyalties, and to consider whether I’m really such an evil man—and to consider whether it makes sense to help me save the lives of some of the innocent, everyday people out there.  If not, I promise I will take the blood of my people out on you.”

He looked to his guards and snapped his fingers.  “Alright, I’m done,” he said.  “Bring his girlfriend in here.”  Then he turned to Coonhill.  “But you interrogate her.  My blood is bubbling and I don’t want to hit a woman.”